Garrett Crochet’s Extension Turns a Good Offseason Into a Great One

As I write this on April 1, I think back to exactly a month ago when I wrote about how the Boston Red Sox needed to lock Garrett Crochet into a long-term extension, ideally before the season began. It had just come out that Crochet wasn’t interested in talking about an extension once the season was underway. Like Sam Kennedy, I believed that the deadline wasn't iron-clad. Lo and behold, on March 31, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the Red Sox and Crochet were in agreement on an extension that would keep him here through 2031. Caleb Kohn and Nick John have done an excellent job of getting the details of the contract up here on Talk Sox, so I want to go in a different direction for a minute. This deal, along with the rumored Kristian Campbell extension talks and the Alex Bregman signing, proves that the front office is putting its money where its mouth is. The organization is serious about winning, even if the current on-field product has gotten off to a slow start.

The Red Sox traded their two most recent first-round picks for Crochet, and that’s a lot to give up for one player. However, the Sox have lacked a top-of-the-rotation arm for years at this point. The starting rotation has been made up of journeymen like Martin Perez, young hurlers like Brayan Bello, or reclamation projects like James Paxton. Tanner Houck turned in a stellar first half of 2024 but faltered as his innings piled up in the second half. If the Red Sox believed that Houck was going to repeat his first-half performance, they likely would have given him some sort of extension during the offseason. Crochet was the best left-handed pitcher on the market, arguably the game, and the Red Sox paid a steep price to get him.

It only makes sense, then, that the front office paid a steeper cash price to secure Crochet’s talent for the foreseeable future. Had he pitched well and stayed healthy this season, his price only would have increased. Crochet is legitimate Cy Young candidate, and pitcher anywhere near that level would have meant a significantly more expensive contract. The closer he got to the end of his two-year stint without a contract, the more money he would have cost in free agency. With this deal, Crochet makes enough money to set him up for life and the Red Sox get their Game 1 starter for the long haul. A small percentage of fans complained about the Bregman deal's deferred money and opt-outs, which could have been a possibility for Crochet's as well. However, there is no deferred money, and the only opt-out comes one year before the end of the deal. That’s smart business for both the player and the team.

Recent history suggests that the Red Sox have felt burned by giving out massive extensions and contracts to starting pitchers, and some of that is justified. However, Garrett Crochet is young enough to make any kind of risk worth it. Even if he's hurt for a year or two, if he pitches like he's capable of pitching the rest of the time, he will provide more than $170 million in value. By locking him up for the next six seasons, the Red Sox have finally shown that they believe that the championship window in Boston is wide open. We’re now entering the early part of many exciting seasons to come.